CableCARD: A Primer

CableCARD has been in the news a lot lately, but there are still a lot of …

Good things come to those who wait

By now, you are probably wondering if CableCARD is for you. In order to answer that question, we first need to talk about future developments in the industry—developments that could well render the CableCARD obsolete.

One obvious development that we have already touched on is the future deployment of CableCARD v2.0 devices, which will be two-way and multistream. Hosts with a legacy CableCARD v1.0 interface will not work with the new cards, which means that if you buy a CableCARD-enabled television set today, it will never be capable of two-way services like pay-per-view without adding a digital set-top box—and if you had wanted one of those, you probably wouldn't have bought a CableCARD-ready TV in the first place.

The new cards should be available by the middle of 2006, according to Brian Dietz, Vice President of Communications for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association in Washington, D.C. The NCTA has filed a status report with the FCC anouncing that the cards (from Motorola, Scientific-Atlanta, and NDS) will be ready this year, though it is unclear whether consumer electronics devices will support them right away. As CableLabs (the group that developed them) tells Ars, "Two-way, multistream CableCARDs are currently being tested successfully at CableLabs and should be ready for deployment in [the second half] of 2006. The real question is the availibility of retail consumer devices that can take advantage of the features that these CableCARDs offer." That "availability of retail consumer devices" will be key, and analyst Gary Sasaki doesn't think we're going to see a usable CableCARD v2.0 system in 2006—and maybe not even in 2007. "Earlier hopes for 2007 were characterized as optimistic," he says, "and this is probably still true." So don't hold your breath—you could be holding it into 2008.

DCAS

But CableCARD v2.0 may not make much of a splash because of the development of a new technology referred to as the Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS), which will do away with CableCARDs altogether. In a nutshell, DCAS puts the security functions of a CableCARD into a software program that can be downloaded into any host device and then run. To enable this functionality, the cable industry is developing a specification called OCAP, the OpenCable Application Platform, which will eventually place standard APIs inside the host devices—in essence, making your television a computer. OCAP will enable cable companies to write not only security software but other applications (interactive games, video on demand systems, etc.) that will be able to run on any piece of OCAP-branded hardware. This is a great advantage (for the cable companies) over the current setup, which often requires them to write or tweak software for each STB. It also does away with the physical security component, which will cut costs (and means that consumers don't need to pay a monthly rental fee). And because all OCAP-enabled devices will be capable of two-way communication, they won't be subject to the drawbacks that currently affect CableCARDs.

DCAS is a big enough deal that the FCC has agreed to extend the ban on offering integrated set-top boxes (those with both navigation and security functions) if the cable industry can show that DCAS will work. In March 2005, the FCC wrote that "if downloadable security proves feasible, but cannot be implemented by July 1, 2007, we will consider a further extension of the deadline." This may in fact happen, because the NCTA is now reporting that DCAS will indeed work, but probably not until 2008. Brian Dietz tells me that "we [the NCTA] expect downloadable security to be supported nationwide by MSOs [cable companies] by July 2008. At that point, retail devices will be using DCAS too, so, going forward, retail devices will use DCAS rather than CableCARDs (everyone agrees DCAS is better and less expensive than cards).

DCAS also provides greater security for the cable industry, since it allows them to change their entire security structure by simply downloading new software into host devices. If a particular algorithm is cracked, it can simply be swapped out for another one. In addition, OCAP-based systems will have internal support for some kind of smart card (something akin to a SIM chip) that will function as a "last resort measure in case the DCAS system is really hacked to the core," according to Gary Sasaki.

So does this make CableCARDs obsolete the minute DCAS appears? No—not if you wait for CableCARD v2.0. CableLabs explained it to us when we contacted them about this issue:

Right now a retail DCR [Digital Cable Ready] TV is bound to a specific Conditional Access System (CAS) thru the CableCARD. In a DCAS device this binding occurs after a secure software download of a specific Conditional Access client. In laymen's terms, DCAS is equivalent to a downloadable CableCARD.

CableCARDs will also be supported for some time by the cable industry, even after DCAS becomes a reality.

If you do choose to wait on getting a CableCARD-ready TV, you'll be joining the rest of the market, which has largely yawned at the new technology to date. Consider the example of Comcast, my own local cable provider. Comcast tells Ars that at the end of the third quarter of 2005, the company had more than 21 million cable customers. Of those 21 million, just over 9 million subscribed to digital cable. Of that 9 million, how many were using CableCARDs to descramble their pristine digital picture? Only 50,000.

In addition to the lack of two-way features, current CableCARDs also command a price premium—not for the card itself, but for the host devices that accept it. Televisions with the CableCARDs slot still retail for a couple hundred dollars more than those without one, and they won't ever be capable of using two-way services. If you can wait for CableCARD v2.0 or for DCAS to arrive, you'll be in much better shape, and much more future-proof.